Pam Bondi is one of Floridas best-known prosecutors. She has analyzed big-time crime on Fox and CNN and personally tried some of the states highest-profile capital murder cases during her 18 years in Tampa-area courtrooms.
Bondi won a conviction that put Adam Davis on death row for murdering his girlfriends mother; scored a capital murder victory over killer William Kenneth Taylor; and helped lock up Melvin Givens for the first-degree murder of a Tampa TV producer.
Along the way, the Republican candidate for Florida attorney general has prosecuted drug kingpins and armed robbers and received attention for cases involving a Backstreet Boy, Yankees ballplayers and boot camp guards.
Celebrity aside, those who know her said its Bondis ability as a serious prosecutor that has won her dozens of victories since joining the Hillsborough County State Attorneys Office in 1992 after graduating from Stetson Law School.
If shes saying she is an experienced prosecutor, I certainly would agree with that, said Walter Smith, a public defender who opposed Bondi in a trial in 2007 involving juvenile boot camp guards charged with the death of an inmate in Bay County.
Prosecutors who included Bondi lost the case. Even though his family won millions of dollars in civil court, a jury found the guards not guilty after the defense argued sickle cell disease contributed to the young mans death.
Its my job as a prosecutor to seek justice, said Bondi, who agreed the defeat was partly due to testimony about the young mans sickle cell condition.
Smith said Bondi, who gave opening arguments setting the tone, probably misread the rural jurys support of the boot camp and seemed to lose the battle of expert medical witnesses during the criminal trial. They were quite shocked. They felt they were going to win, Smith said. But the jurors were on our side.
The defeat came after Bondi and others had been named outside special prosecutors because of a conflict of interest Panhandle-area prosecutors had with investigators.
But the loss followed a string of big victories that had helped Bondi grab attention earlier in her career. She succeeded in her conviction of Davis in 1999 by prosecuting Davis girlfriend, Valessa Robinson, in 2000, for helping murder her mother.
Robinson was only 15 when the murder occurred. Though Bondi touts her toughness against juveniles, an article in The St. Petersburg Times in 2009 noted Hillsborough County had more juveniles tried as adults than any county in Florida. Critics said preventing juvenile crime requires a more holistic approach.
Bondi had put away Melvin in 2003 for the brutal stabbing murder of WFLA-TV producer Danielle Cipriani in a case that brought her further into the spotlight. And she won a conviction of Taylor in 2004 for his maiming of Billy Maddox and brutally slaying Maddoxs sister, Sandra Kushmer, during a home robbery.
As assistant state attorney for Hillsborough County, Bondi served often as spokeswoman for nationally publicized Tampa-area cases, like the one involving Debra Lafave, the blonde 24-year-old middle school teacher accused of sexual liaisons with a 14-year-old student.
It didnt hurt her profile that celebrities like Backstreet Boy Nick Carter and New York Yankees Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry ran afoul of the law in Bondis jurisdiction. Carter was involved in a barroom brawl and the baseball players faced drug charges and another offense.
Bondi, a registered Democrat from 1984 to 2000, when she became a Republican, said she worked her way up in the State Attorneys Office. At first, she handled DUIs and burglaries, then prosecuted an array of felony cases, including the most serious.
She is proud of her prosecution of the Barry Mutcherson case early in her career, in 1995, not so much for its weight as a serious crime but for its contribution to case law. Mutcherson was convicted of smashing store windows to get at coin-rich gumball machines. The conviction, though, helped establish similar fact evidence case law.
Bondi also noted her prosecution early in her career in 1992 of Richard Hale, who was convicted of killing his sick, wheelchair-bound wife.
Ive worked hand-in-hand with law enforcement for nearly two decades, said Bondi, stressing her ties to the police.
Despite what she considers strong ties, in September a key group, the Police Benevolent Association, endorsed Bondis opponent, Democrat Dan Gelber. Our law enforcement people in (Hillsborough County) think very highly of Pam Bondi. They say she is a very good prosecutor, Florida PBA Executive Director David Murrell said. The difference is, Dan Gelber has a broader range of knowledge.
Bondi has received endorsements from 20 county sheriffs, a wing of the Florida Police Chiefs Association and the Florida Fraternal Order of Police. She said she received the endorsements for attorney general because, this is your chief law enforcement officer for the state of Florida, not your chief politician, comparing her resume to Gelbers. I dont see this as a stepping stone.
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Doug Filaroski, a journalist who makes his home in Jacksonville, wrote this story "special to Sunshine State News."
